Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-31T23:44:09.625Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Decoration in the Desert: Unsettling the Order of Architecture in the Certosa di San Martino

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 November 2020

Get access

Summary

Abstract

This chapter examines the early-seventeenth-century decoration of Cosimo Fanzago at the Carthusian monastery of San Martino, Naples. Mixing classical architectural vocabulary and strange, organic flourishes, Fanzago's work is powerfully suggestive, yet never settles down into recognizable elements. This chapter considers how such monstrous, non-figural ornament might be interpreted without recourse to iconography. Fanzago's doorways both question the limits and celebrate the potential of classical architecture. Their fluid, polymorphous forms echo contemporary anxieties about architecture's monstrous productivity. The unsettling, unravelling decoration furthermore questions the nature of monastic enclosure. Through comparison with a Carthusian book of emblems, the chapter reconsiders the space of retreat, and argues it is Fanzago's exploitation of the productive potential of the gap that makes his strange decoration fit for a Carthusian cloister.

Keywords: decoration, ornament, monastic architecture, Carthusians, Cosimo Fanzago

The whitewashed walkways of the Great Cloister at the Certosa di San Martino in Naples (Ill. 5.1) do not feature grotesques or beasts. Yet in Cosimo Fanzago's carved marble door surrounds (Ill. 5.2) in the four corners of the walkway, one is confronted with architecture that is disconcertingly fluid, polymorphous, unsettling (Ills. 5.3 and 5.4). Split between presenting doors and presenting busts, the surrounds impinge upon the viewer's attention and trouble the distinction between content and framing. Fanzago's flourishes evoke elements of classical architectural vocabulary, yet the forms are in a constant state of flux, twisting, turning, deforming, and appearing in strange places. Although powerfully suggestive of monstrous creatures or faces, they never quite coalesce into fin, face, or tendril.

This chapter considers how these difficult forms might be interpreted. The nonfigural nature of the decoration makes it particularly challenging in the context of one of the most austere monastic orders. Neither here nor there, the forms escape definition. This chapter considers how Cosimo Fanzago's ornament troubles architecture and how its monstrous character taps into wider architectural discourses. In avoiding too literal a view of monstrosity, however, this study also aims to draw out the potentialities of ornament which become obscured by an iconographic approach, and which allow decoration to be considered a crucial, constructive component of the functioning of architecture.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×